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London Stock Exchange Was 'Under Major Cyberattack' During Linux Switch
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Computerworld UK:
"The London Stock Exchange's new open source trading system may have been hacked last year, according to a report. The alleged attack came as the LSE began the switch over to the Linux-based systems, according to the dates referred to in the Times newspaper. The continued threat of cyber attack has resulted in the LSE keeping a close dialogue with British security services, which this year branded cyber attacks as one of the biggest threats to the country. There were major problems on the exchange on 24 August, when stock prices of five large companies collapsed."
A threat to national security!
'may have been' another piece of MS-sponsored FUD?
Whoops!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The website is extremely vague as to timelines of what system was in place when there were issues. Was .NET still in place, or was it indeed the Linux system when it got hacked. I'd like to see more details.
Part of thinks that these guys may have had easy access to the stock exchange system through whatever backdoor they had. Closing it then pissed them off so they went on the attack.
Task Mangler
The question I would have is this: Would the MS system have held better?
I am not a Linux nor a MS lover. I see the limitations of both OS-es. Neither are absolute secure, and I can hack neither (since I can't hack).
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think of what could happen to a trading network connected to the Internet. I imagine Stuxnet aimed at financial systems. Shudder.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
The number of people able to access any other port than the 1 or 2 necessary for exchange functions should number in the single digits for the production servers ... and even they shouldn't use computers with general internet access for that, at most computers with a "hardware" VPN solution. Hell given the amount of money involved I wouldn't even let non production servers and source code be accessed on any computer with general internet access ... fuck convenience, for this kind of money you can afford a whole lot of inconvenience.
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Where would the D: drive be mounted in Linux?
Even ignoring concerns over whether the prior system was compromised, when this one came online, this would be the perfect time to be the first in, before anybody else set their hooks, and before the holes got closed. It'd be a time of bother, mistakes, and manifold chaos. When else would you like to hit a system? When everybody went away from Christmas Break?
Tempting, but really, they'd strike while the iron was hot, and the novice was fresh on the field.
how can be Linux involved in this attack at all if migration didn't take place yet and the production system is still running the Microsoft .NET based TradElect brokerage system? this looks like yet-another-smear-campaign
No worries. The LSE collapses due to fatal infosec problems and the UK taxpayer picks up the bill. We could probably pick up some bargain-basement deals on whichever companies were affected by the trading system collapse too. In the long term, allowing poorly secured systems to fail is a kind of digital natural selection.
Who gives a fuck [sorry, grumpy - it's the morning]
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) have not yet moved on to the new Linux based Millenium trading platform - this is scheduled to happen on Feb 14th. It was supposed to have happened late last year but was delayed.
A subsiduary of the LSE, the Turquoise Multilateral trading Facility (MTF) has already migrated to the MIT platform though.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
I you rtfa it tells you that it was during the switch over that attacks took place. Sounds like some goofball IT genius left some .net sql drivel open to the net. I can see how a closed system could be compromised very easily if the data routing is not carefully planned with a .net system that has all sorts of in house access routines. Data migration from MSSQL is a nightmare and can and does regularly cause incredible difficulties for the poor suckers that have to work with it until the Microsoft SQL framework is completely removed.
We had something similar happen with a switch to Oracle on RedHat with medical data. The migration caused data execution hell until I pulled the plug on all the .net request calls and rewrote the shit! The only way to do it was to run the two systems at the same time and very slowly eliminate the old, and keep the original framework intact to be absolutely certain that no data was lost. Amazing how all of a sudden what was really expensive gear 7 years ago now suddenly is for sale for next to nothing. Though some of it is still in use for other less mission critical things. And you wonder why health care is getting so expensive! Funny but the gear that replaced it that runs the new server cost about 30% of what original the NT 2003 based servers were. The overall savings will be fairly good as the per seat costs now are only for the pc terminals and not a huge server bill. Unfortunately there is just no way to completely eliminate the use of MS Word or Excel yet. At least without a revolt from the users.
Your mom was under a major cyber attack!
A pointed out already, it seems that the system WAS the MS system. The migration to Linux was not yet done.
Move Sig. For great justice.
The question I would have is this: Would the MS system have held better?
The answer is "it depends".
Mostly, it depends on who's doing the hacking and who's managing the system. If it's a bunch of script kiddies or some bot which tries a number of well-known hacks then gives up and the system is competently managed, chances are neither would be particularly insecure.
If the system is poorly managed - be it Windows or Linux - chances are it's not going to take much effort to get in and some kid following a script without really understanding it could do it.
Where things get interesting (and impossible to discuss meaningfully without a better understanding of the systems themselves) is when you have competent, well-funded IT management (which I would hope any stock exchange would) and competent, well-funded attackers who are focused on a single goal (which is entirely possible when you're talking about a high-profile victim like this).
From one of the comments
"A half truth is a whole lie" ---Yiddish proverb.
This is just awesome. Just when you would think it would be impossible to spin an attack on a major Microsoft based trading system, they omit Microsoft, insert Linux and speak of the dreaded cyberattack.
I have to wonder who and why. Anyone have any background on the author and the publication's history on Linux and Windows stories?
the byline reads "Steve Ballmer".
Out of many different securities markets LSE has most bizarre bureaucratic procedures, rules, and provisioning processes. In the past years their market share shrunk a lot under pressure from much simpler to deal with MTFs (BATS, Chi-X etc.) Seems like they have too many people busy making work for themselves and their clients.
Besides they have not switched to Millennium (Linux based) yet. I'm not holding my breath though. Millennium platform is developed by Sri-Lancan Millennium IT. Out of all places where you have people skilled in developing trading engines I would pick maybe New York or Chicago. But Colombo???
The new Linux system, based in a C++ environment, is already live on the LSE’s Turquoise, or anonymous, trading venue.
And here I thourgt that C++ was a programming language ...
microsoft?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Did they use an external firm, to do this? If so, how come someone knew that at that time they were changing systems, and would know that the change was one of the OS, unless it came from the inside, I would look at who had access to that info, and then maybe go from there...
If someone leaked from the inside, then there would be a trace, usually...as this costs many millions of dollars.
Not to nitpick, but you really want the former AMEX or PHLX exchanges. They were on the leading edge for trading platforms. When the regulators said "Could you do X", these guys said "Sure give us 3 months, but you are thinking too small, here is what we all need to do 10 years down the line". CBOT and NYSE were old school, they said "We will get back to you next year after researching that".
I think NYSE acquired AMEX and PHLX just for the tech, cause in the end, they were still years behind the two.
Disclaimer: I interviewed the PHLX developers. Some of the smartest old guys (and one way-too-smart old lady) I have ever come across in the world. They were extremely humble about their talents too.
This is nothing but FUD. It's a based on a report in newspaper that an anonymous source said the "flash crashes" where several companies stock price dropped rapidly last year were being investigated by intelligence agencies to see if they were the result of a cyber attack.
Nothing to see here, move along.
"The London Stock Exchange's new open source trading system may have been hacked last year"
And where's the evidence, the article is technically erroneous and totally short on any verifiable facts.
"Unlike US exchanges, the LSE platform is not based on the internet ..
"The new Linux system, based in a C++ environment"
Please define a 'C++ environment', and provide examples?
link
Uh oh. That means it's almost certainly Java, which never is a good idea for low-latency systems. Where RT, ULL and GRIO is concerned, it's pretty much the last choice I'd recommend.
So a bunch of Linux wankers trying to prove a point were attacking the Windows system?
Did you RTFA? The outages occurred on the Microsoft .NET system, not on the Linux system. The linux system isn't even on line yet. You MS fanbois really aught to learn to read.
The answer to that is in the article. It was the Microsoft .NET system which failed. The Linux system isn't even on line yet.
Imagine that in the conversion from MS Windows server to Linux, the attack succeeded on the Linux side. Who would profit from the publicity? Would some company pay to have such attacks take place? Just some far-out thoughts.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada